Roy was sitting impatiently in the kitchen, listening to the soft tinkering sounds emanating from the living room. Winry had been working on Edward's automail for a while now, but they had to wait it out in the separate room for the work to be completed. It was exhausting.
Winry hadn't yet seen any of them other than Edward, so he couldn't quite say what her reaction would be if she noticed them. Maybe she wouldn't. In all reasonable thinking, it was possible that she would be taken back upstairs to that darkened room and continue her endless and predetermined to be fruitless quest to save Alphonse from a fate he had already succumbed to. Or, in equal probability, she could come out of that room and into theirs, the fixing of Edward completed, and look around at all of their faces without seeing them still. Her mental state would block them out as unnecessary or unimportant when there was no one to be fixed.
That was probably the key in all of this. Fixing people. Her primary goal was to repair Alphonse so that he could be whole again, or as whole as a soul bound to a metal suit of armor could be, regardless that she'd forgotten already about his human body. If there was any way she could bring Al back, the armor was the most viable path. Winry wasn't an alchemist.
But Edward came, broken and tattered, and she'd seen that as a detour. Something else to be done, to be fixed, and most likely he was the only broken thing that had the ability to sidetrack her as he'd done. He was the other half of the childhood pair that were so dear to her. She did not see Ed as the remaining one, or the overpowering half, all that was left of them. No, to her eyes, Edward and Alphonse were still equals.
Edward could be fixed more easily, though, and, despite whether she was conscious of it even now, he could actually utilize the repairs to form real function. Al could not, and Ed became priority. She wasn't aware of that, though. She just fixed him because he was there to fix. It was only in the very back of the deepest, darkest crevices of her mind that she knew that Alphonse couldn't return. But in her forward thinking, that wasn't the case. With every other fiber of her being, she believed that the suit of armor destroyed was the total undoing of Al, that if only that could be reversed, then he would come back.
It was her illusion. But perhaps, when death occurs, they all form illusions. It was easier to have an illusion than to be left with that hole. Roy could tell that much from experience. It was all too common for war-trained soldiers to come up with some sort of self-detrimental coping strategy. It was bad enough that they'd lost someone, but that that person brought others down with him in the process was even worse.
Death was an ugly affair, and these kids had had so much of it in their lives. It was too much. They were bound to break eventually, and the departure of someone so close to them finally did it.
Roy realized that his back was getting quite sore. Darn these wooden chairs, and this countryside frugality. He shifted around, chain of thought broken. The chair's legs squeaked loudly on the hard floor, but no one in the room flinched or made any sign of recognition.
It had just been that much of a wait, the baited, struggling, endless kind of wait. They were all bearing the same horrible experience, trying to last out here without being able to check on what happened in there. It was awful. He'd hate to create a mental link such as this, his years begging against it, but they all cared deeply about at least someone in the next room. It was painful to sit it out like this, with the both of them out of sight.
He hoped the work would go by quickly, because he couldn't stand this much longer.
They'd been sitting in various places around the kitchen since it started. None of them wanted to move or talk, really, so they sat in silence. Roy cast a glance at both of the other inhabitance. At least their silence left him room enough to think about the situation.
Riza was leaning back in her equally uncomfortable wooden chair, looking like she was about to fall asleep. He wondered if she'd slept at all on the way here. It was hard to say, with him being busy managing Edward's unconscious load. He would bet that she hadn't, by the way she looked now. Although, he was sure that if need be she was perfectly alert and ready for any coming situation.
Pinako sat low in her chair, a squat stool in the corner. Roy pondered briefly about that one's comfort level, but left the thought unfinished. Pinako's eyes were calm and assessing, face set in a mask of grim patience. Every feature led blatantly to her determined wisdom. It surprised Roy, even though it shouldn't have. So she wasn't just a crazy, government hating old bat after all. Good to know.
Roy realized with some note of revelation that he trusted these people. Actually trusted them, as much as he could trust anyone else. His war comrades, his team, anyone. Riza should have been a given, but the mere fact that he was surrounded by souls whose decisions he could trust were the best and feelings he knew were pure and non-conspiratory, well, that was an amazement in and of itself.
The fact that Pinako was included in this admission was even more earth-shattering. What the hell was he doing trusting Pinako?
Even so, it felt… nice. Nice to have people he was able to trust. And that he knew they were completely alone like that, well, that was something he could never find in Central. Maybe there was something to this country living after all.
He felt a sharp pain in his lower back from sitting in the same position on that damned wooden chair again.
So no. Country life was for the old and the stupid. But still, he was thankful for the quiet.
"Hey, Musty, stop marking up my floor. Those chairs aren't meant to move like that."
There were no advantages.
And he still had no idea when Winry would finish already so he could get his Edward and leave.
-philos
And happy birthday to me, whooooo
